IRAN WATCH CANADA

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Nazanin Zachary's Letter From Evin Prison To Her Baby : No Cruelty Will Go Unpunished ........

According to news coming from Iran, Nazanin Zaghary the Iranian -British political prisoner in the women ward of Evin prison ,spoke with her little child about the patience and hope against cruelty and injustices.

Nazanin Zachary who is sentenced to five years imprisonment ,in her letter wrote: " Believe me, i didn't know that , in a country where your mom has borne and grew , you will face such a horrendous and painful destiny , and if i knew , i would have thought twice in closing my travelling suitcase for a two weeks travel to Iran ."

" A day will come and we will get together again . If time has taken away these days and your childhood from your father and me , no worries , they can't take our memories and our future dreams from us . No cruelty will go unpunished ."

Thursday, January 26, 2017

2017 Geneva Summit Presenters

The Human Rights Heroes Inside Iranian Prisons

Taghi Rahmani has spent 14 years in Iranian prisons. His ailing wife, eminent human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, is currently languishing as a political prisoner. The couple have dedicated their lives to the struggle for human rights in Iran

GENEVA, Jan. 26, 2017 - A coalition of 25 non-governmental human rights groups announced today that Taghi Rahmani, the most frequently imprisoned Iranian journalist, and husband of ailing political prisoner Narges Mohammadi, will testify in the U.N. for the opening of the 9th annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights & Democracy, on February 21, 2017.

Taghi Rahmani has spent his life in and out of Iranian prisons for daring to criticize the regime. In 2012, amid intensified crackdowns against dissent, Rahmani fled Iran with his two children to seek refuge in Paris.

Rahmani's wife, Narges Mohammadi, made the brave decision to stay behind and continue her work leading the struggle for human rights in Iran. Since 2015, she has been held as a prisoner of conscience of the Iranian regime, despite suffering from a critical and worsening illness.

Taghi Rahmani, the most frequently jailed Iranian journalist, languished in Iranian prisons for over 14 years.

Rahmani will joins some of the world's most courageous champions of human rights: dissidents, activists, victims and relatives of political prisoners from Russia, Turkey, Tibet and Vietnam, who will be testifying on the human rights situation in their countries. A high-profile North Korean defector, and a young Yazidi woman who wrote a book her being raped by ISIS terrorists, will also speak.

Mohamed Nasheed, the veteran human rights activist who was elected president of the Maldives only to be arrested and jailed as a political prisoner, will be one of the keynote speakers. Amal Clooney, his lawyer, has received death threats for defending Nasheed. See selected presenters below.

The acclaimed annual conference is timed to take place in Geneva days before foreign ministers gather to open the 2017 U.N. Human Rights Council session.

"It's a focal point for dissidents worldwide," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, which for the ninth year in a row will be organizing the annual event together with a cross-regional coalition of 25 other human rights groups.

The global gathering is acclaimed as a one-stop opportunity to hear from and meet front-line human rights advocates, many of whom have personally suffered imprisonment and torture.

"The speakers’ compelling and vivid testimonies will aim to stir the conscience of the U.N. to address critical human rights situations around the world," said Neuer.Subjects on the program this year include discrimination against women, jailing of journalists, prison camps, Internet freedom, religious intolerance, and the persecution of human rights defenders.

Admission to this year’s February 21, 2017 summit is free and open to the public, but registration is mandatory. For accreditation, program and schedule information, visitwww.genevasummit.org. The conference will also be available via live webcast.

IRAN WATCH CANADA: The security apparatus of the Islamic regime closes online websites or softwares whenever they want . In recent weeks several sites or telegram social networkings were closed and their group managers were summoned to security offices. One such example is the Hormozgan province summons and arrests of 32 managers of telegram social networking .

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

It is becoming a norm that Islamic regime in Iran punishing journalists with lashes....

Two Journalists each received 40 lashes...

The first journalist Hossein Movahedi received 40 lashes was from the city of Najaf Abad. In his report he made a mistake on the number of motorcycles the city police recovered in the city . Apparently the number he has reported was more than actually recovered . But now another journalist from the city of Shahroud - the chief editor of Shahroud local news website also received 40 lashes.

Iran’s persistent use of cruel and inhuman punishments, including floggings, amputations and forced blinding over the past year, exposes the authorities’ utterly brutal sense of justice, said Amnesty International.

Hundreds are routinely flogged in Iran each year, sometimes in public.

In the most recent flogging case recorded by Amnesty International, a journalist was lashed 40 times in Najaf Abad, Esfahan Province, on 5 January after a court found him guilty of inaccurately reporting the number of motorcycles confiscated by police in the city.

“The authorities’ prolific use of corporal punishment, including flogging, amputation and blinding, throughout 2016 highlights the inhumanity of a justice system that legalizes brutality. These cruel and inhuman punishments are a shocking assault on human dignity and violate the absolute international prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment,” said Randa Habib, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The latest flogging of a journalist raises alarms that the authorities intend to continue the spree of cruel punishments we have witnessed over the past year into 2017.”

Under Iranian law, more than 100 “offences” are punishable by flogging. These cover a wide array of acts, ranging from theft, assault, vandalism, defamation and fraud to acts that should not be criminalized at all such as adultery, intimate relationships between unmarried men and women, “breach of public morals” and consensual same-sex sexual relations.

Many of those flogged in Iran are young people under the age of 35 who have been arrested for peaceful activities such as publicly eating during Ramadan, having relationships outside of marriage and attending mixed-gender parties. Such activities are protected under the rights to freedom of belief, religion, expression and association and must never be criminalized.

As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Iran is legally obliged to forbid torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. However, Iranian law continues to allow internationally banned corporal punishments including amputation, stoning and flogging and claims to justify it in the name of protecting religious morals.

In one case last April, an unmarried couple convicted of “having an illegitimate relationship” were sentenced to 100 lashes each. A month later 35 young women and men arrested in Qazvin Province for dancing, mingling and consuming alcohol at a party were sentenced to 99 lashes each. The sentences were carried out immediately. Lashing sentences were also carried out in May 2016 against a group of 17 miners who protested against their employment conditions and dismissals in West Azerbaijan Province.Journalists and bloggers have also been sentenced to flogging in relation to their work. In July, an appeal court sentenced journalist Mohammad Reza Fathi to 459 lashes for “publishing lies” and “creating unease in the public mind” through his writing.The popular Iranian Facebook page “Azadihayeh Yavashaki” (My Stealthy Freedom), administered by the journalist and women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, has posted detailed accounts from several women who received lashes for consuming alcohol and attending mixed-gender parties which were raided by Iran’s morality police. The page also features images showing the severe injuries on women’s backs as a result of these lashings.

In one of the posts, a 28-year-old woman who received 80 lashes for attending a birthday party described the day she was flogged as “the worst day of [her] life”. She described how, after her arrest, her photograph and fingerprints were taken before she was led to a small room where a middle-aged woman flogged her repeatedly while her feet were in chains and her hands shackled.

“With the impact of the first lash, I jumped out of my [seat] uncontrollably. I was so shocked that even my tears would not drop. I wanted to scream, but I could not even control my voice. Every time she hit me hard, she would ask me to repent so that God would forgive me,” she said.Another woman, who was also lashed for attending a mixed-gender party to celebrate her recent engagement in the city of Robat Karim, near Tehran, described how, less than one hour after the party began, security forces stormed the villa where it was taking place, confiscating bottles of alcohol. They questioned several of the guests and brutally beat many of them before taking them to a police station where they were insulted and interrogated. They were forced to spend three nights in jail before being sentenced to 74 lashes each.

“I don’t remember how many lashes I had received, but I reached a stage where I was just moaning and had become numb with pain. When I finally arrived home, I was afflicted with a terrible pain on my body while my soul was aching due to the feelings of humiliation and fear that I had lived throughout the entire ordeal,” she said about her experience.

In addition to floggings, Amnesty International also recorded an incident in November 2016 when a man was forcibly blinded in both eyes in Tehran in retribution for blinding a four-year-old girl in an acid attack in June 2009. Several other prisoners remain at risk of being forcibly blinded.

Disturbingly, doctors from the Legal Medicine Organization of Iran provide the Supreme Court with “expert” advice on whether the implementation of a blinding sentence is medically feasible and how it can be carried out, seriously breaching medical ethics.

“Medical professionals have a clear duty to avoid any involvement in acts of torture and other ill-treatment. Rather than aiding and abetting acts of torture by providing pre-blinding medical assessments, doctors in Iran should refuse to participate in such calculated cruelty,” said Randa Habib.

Amnesty International has also recorded at least four amputations carried out for robberies in Iran, including “cross amputations” of several fingers and toes on opposite sides of the victim’s body.

“Severing people’s limbs, taking away their eyesight and subjecting them to brutal lashings cannot be considered justice. The Iranian authorities should urgently abolish all forms of corporal punishment and take urgent steps to bring the country’s deeply flawed criminal justice system into line with international human rights law and standards,” said Randa Habib.

Public Document

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For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on

Iran should immediately halt the execution of 12 men convicted of drug offences, scheduled for 14 January in Karaj Central Prison, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. The human rights organizations expressed concern that, despite repeated government promises, Iran has not made any tangible progress in reducing its alarming execution rate.

On 8 January, officials at the prison, in Alborz province, west of Tehran, transferred at least 12 people sentenced to death on drug charges to solitary confinement, notifying them that their execution was imminent. However, the execution was postponed due to the death of Iran’s former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have been able to confirm the identities of four of the 12: Ali Mohammad Lorestani, Mohammad Soleimani, Ali Ebadi and Majid Badrlou. Sources familiar with the cases of these men said that those accused did not have access to a lawyer during interrogations, and that the verdicts for Lorestani, Soleimani, and Ebadi were based on other prisoners’ confessions.

“Iranian officials should end all executions and outlaw the use of the death penalty for drug offenders, which does not meet international legal standards,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Packing prisons with drug offenders and rushing to send them to death row without due process in highly flawed trials will just worsen Iran’s justice problem while doing nothing to solve Iran’s drug problem.”

Iran’s drug law mandates the death penalty for the trafficking, possession, or trade of as little as 30 grams of synthetic drugs such as heroin, morphine, cocaine, or their chemical derivatives. Iran executed hundreds of people in 2016, the majority for drug offences. According to Hassan Noroozi, a member of parliament, there are 5,000 people on death row for drug offences in Iran, the majority between the ages of 20 and 30.

The Iranian authorities arrested Mohammad Soleimani, who is from the city of Kermanshah and the father of three children, in Karaj in March 2015 in connection with the alleged possession of between 700 and 800 grams of heroin. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have communicated with an informed source who said that Soleimani was not in possession of any drugs at the time of his arrest. According to the source, his sentence was based on the confessions of two men who implicated Mohammad Soleimani after they themselves were caught in possession of drugs.

Another informed source said that the Supreme Court quashed Soleimani’s death sentence in July 2016 and granted him a retrial. However, he was later re-sentenced to death after a summary retrial, which was limited to one brief session, before a revolutionary court in Karaj. In a second review of Soleimani’s case the Supreme Court rejected his appeal and upheld the death sentence.

Sources close to Ali Mohammad Lorestani told Human Rights Watch that authorities in Alborz province arrested him in October 2012, detaining him for at least 18 days at a police detention center and interrogating him without access to legal counsel. “His family had no idea where the authorities took [him],” a source said. “One of his fingers was broken when he was transferred to prison.”

Authorities arrested Majid Badrlou, a 29-year-old taxi driver, and seized 990 grams of heroin from his car on July 15, 2011. A source familiar with his case told Human Rights Watch that Badrlou did not appeal, as he feared it would worsen the legal outcome. The source also reported that “authorities severely beat Badrlou when he was detained for interrogation at Iran’s Drug Control Office’s detention center.”

“The death penalty is a cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment that violates the right to life. Its use is abhorrent in any circumstances, but carrying out these executions would be particularly tragic given ongoing discussions in the Iranian parliament that could lead to the abolition of the death penalty for non-violent drug offences,” said Philip Luther, Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“Instead of condemning 12 people to the gallows Iran should immediately establish an official moratorium on executions and focus on working to abolish the death penalty in Iran once and for all,” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said.

In December 2015, members of parliament submitted a proposal to eliminate the death penalty for drug offences, except for armed smuggling, but the initiative did not move forward. On 23 November 2016, 100 members of parliament introduced new draft legislation that is weaker than the 2015 attempt, as the bill only forbids the use of the death penalty in the case of non-violent drug offences and maintains several categories of drug offences that will still attract the death penalty. The new draft bill is currently under consideration by several parliamentary commissions.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly documented serious due process and fair trial violations, including the use of torture and other ill-treatment and summary trials, in capital drug cases in Iran.

The UN Human Rights Committee has stated that a death sentence passed after an unfair proceeding violates both the right to life and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Even in countries that retain the death penalty, international human rights law states that the use of death penalty should be limited to the “most serious crimes” – crimes involving intentional killing – which does not include drug offences. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International oppose the death penalty in all circumstances because it is inherently irreversible and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Iran should reverse the death sentences against these 12 individuals and abolish the death penalty once and for all, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

CJFE CONDEMNS THE DETENTION AND SENTENCING OF NARGES MOHAMMADI

CJFE CONDEMNS THE DETENTION AND SENTENCING OF NARGES MOHAMMADI

Monday, December 19, 2016

CJFE condemns the detention and sentencing of Narges Mohammadi, a prominent Iranian human rights defender and lawyer who was arrested in 2015 for campaigning against Iran’s juvenile death penalty. In September 2016, Mohammadi was sentenced to 16 years in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, a decision that has been upheld after an appeal. She was found guilty of establishing a group that illegally campaigns to abolish the death penalty in Iran. Next to China, Iran has the highest number of executions in the world, with 977 people executed in 2015.

Mohammadi suffers from a critical neurological disease that developed in 2010 during a previous detention at Evin prison where she was kept in solitary confinement, and her health is worsening due the poor conditions in the prison.

The arrest and sentencing of Mohammadi is a troubling reminder of the disregard for human rights and freedom of expression in Iran. Canadian professor Homa Hoodfar, who was also held at Evin prison, was released and returned to Canada this fall, marking a step in the right direction for Iran’s treatment of unjustly arrested human rights defenders. However, Hoodfar is an exception to the rule, as other activists like Mohammadi remain in inhumane prisons.

CJFE calls on Iranian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Narges Mohammadi, a prisoner of conscience who should not be imprisoned for exercising her right to free expression in defence of human rights. Moreover, the Iranian government must take substantive action to protect freedom of expression and immediately release all prisoners of conscience in Iran.

This letter was sent to Mr. Gholam Ali Khoshroo, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations

The Iranian authorities must immediately transfer Arash Sadeghi, an imprisoned human rights defender who ended his 71-day hunger strike yesterday, to hospital so that he can receive the urgent specialized medical care he requires, Amnesty International said today.

Arash Sadeghi went on hunger strike in October 2016 in protest at the imprisonment of his wife, the writer and human rights defender Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, who was jailed for writing a fictional story about stoning. After a global outcry, she was eventually released on temporary prison leave yesterday.

Arash Sadeghi was due to be transferred from Tehran’s Evin Prison to a hospital last night. However, reliably informed sources told Amnesty International that the prison authorities have refused to transfer him.

“The delay in transferring Arash Sadeghi to a hospital is cruel and degrading. His situation is critical and he must receive specialized, urgent and potentially life-saving treatment without any further delay. By failing to authorize his transfer to hospital the Iranian authorities are callously toying with his life and flouting their obligation under international law to provide him with access to adequate medical care,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Directory for the Middle East and North Africa.

Arash Sadeghi is suffering from multiple health problems and symptoms including inflamed and severely infected lungs, severe drops in blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting blood. Over the course of his hunger strike, he lost more than 20kg of his weight. Doctors have expressed concern about long-term damage to his kidneys and estimated that about 70% of his right kidney and 20% of his left kidney are not functioning.

Early this morning, he was transferred to the prison medical clinic after he began to vomit blood and suffered from severe coughing, nausea, and abdominal pain. There, he was given some anti-nausea medicine, pain medication and intravenous fluids before being returned to his prison cell.

“The Iranian authorities’ treatment of Arash Sadeghi has been utterly deplorable. First they unjustly imprisoned him, then they ignored his legitimate protest against his wife’s unwarranted imprisonment for weeks, and now they are denying him urgent medical care. They must stop endangering his health and his life and order his transfer to hospital immediately, pending his unconditional release,” said Philip Luther.

Background

Arash Sadeghi has been serving a 15-year sentence for his peaceful human rights activities since June 2016. His wife Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee had been sentenced to six years in prison on charges including “insulting Islamic sanctities”. Her request for judicial review is currently pending before Iran’s Supreme Court. Amnesty International considers both to be prisoners of conscience.

In a report entitled Health taken hostage: Cruel denial of medical care in Iran’s prisons and published in July 2016, Amnesty International documented a pattern of political prisoners being denied timely specialized medical care outside prison, often as a deliberate act by the judicial authorities, in particular the Office of the Prosecutor and prison administrations.

Public Document

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For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on

About

IRAN WATCH CANADA online Is managed by Morteza Abdolalian (Mori) .It is the continuation of Iran Watch bulletin (print) since 2004 .It monitors daily news about Media,journalists and human rights in Iran.It defends press freedom,freedom of expression,Freedom of Information and Human Rights Activists in Iran and around the world.It has no affiliation to any political organizations.It is illegal using Iran Watch Canada without mentioning it as the source.